Turkey, once one of Syria’s closest allies, is hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency against the government of President Bashar Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.
The support for the insurgents comes amid a broader Turkish campaign to undermine Assad’s government. Turkey is expected to impose sanctions soon on Syria, and it has deepened its support for an umbrella political opposition group known as the Syrian National Council, which announced its formation in Istanbul. But its harboring of leaders in the Free Syrian Army, a militia composed of defectors from the Syrian armed forces, may be its most striking challenge so far to Damascus.
On Wednesday, the group, living in a heavily guarded refugee camp in Turkey, claimed responsibility for killing nine Syrian soldiers, including one uniformed officer, in an attack in central Syria.
Turkish officials describe their relationship with the group as purely humanitarian. Turkey’s primary concern, the officials said, is for the physical safety of defectors.
TUNISIA: Moderate Islamist party wins 90 of 217 seats.
Authorities say the moderate Islamist Ennahda party has won Tunisia’s first free elections, winning 90 of 217 seats in an assembly tasked with writing a new constitution for the fledgling democracy.
Authorities on Thursday said the Congress for the Republic party, founded in 2001 by noted human-rights activist Moncef Marzouki, came in second with 30 seats.
The landmark voting took place Sunday.
LIBYA: U.N. votes to end authorization of intervention in Libya.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to end its authorization on Monday of the foreign military intervention in Libya, the legal basis for the NATO attacks on Moammar Khadafy’s forces during the eight-month civil war that toppled him from power.
The council’s action, a week after Khadafy was killed, was not unexpected. But it came despite new worries in Libya that Khadafy’s remaining loyalists might not be vanquished and that they might regroup outside Libya to cause new trouble in the months ahead.
The interim government, the National Transitional Council, has said it will investigate the circumstances of Khadafy’s death.
